It matters depending on which ethical theory you use to judge the rightness or wrongness of conduct here.
Itâs important to try to engage with someone like you to understand what your definitions or assumptions are instead of arguing as if there are basic concepts that everyone obviously agrees with unless they are acting in bad faith.
Iâd say that the US should have been concerned primarily with minimizing the risk of conflict between Russia and the US and generally improving relations between the US and Russia.
If you and Mearsh are so unconcerned with blame or morality, why is it even correct to call what is happening a âcrisis?â I mean, some people call sinking the 8 ball too early âlosing the game,â but to others, itâs just physics in action.
Why should the US have been concerned with those? Mearsheimerâs argument is that China is the enemy that the US should be concerned with and that getting into it with Russia is a distraction may cost a potential ally. Do you agree with this reason for opposing making Ukraine an area of contention?
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I donât have an opinion about that. Improving relations and thus lowering the risk of a catastrophic war with a country with 10,000 nuclear weapons is clearly in the US interest in and of itself.
I think Mearsheimer argues that the US will and should defend Taiwan if China invades. Iâm not convinced thatâs a good idea and donât know what would happen if China sinks a US carrier group in the South China Sea.
He thinks that in the short term, the US will defend Taiwan to defend its credibility, but in the long term the more reasonable strategy might be to abandon Taiwan and let China do as it wishes because Taiwan is ultimately not important enough to risk nuclear escalation over.
Iâm wondering which country @Keeed and @John consider the regional Eastern European hegemon. It certainly canât be Russia.
John says that Russia is a declining great power. It isnât a regional hegemon. For comparison, John says that China is attempting to become a regional hegemon, obviously if China isnât a regional hegemon as of right now then a far less powerful Russia canât be either.
Also Argentina, and ostensibly Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Shouldnât Mearsheimerâs theory predict that the United States would aggressively work to prevent Russia from becoming a regional hegemon (preferably by buck-passing, getting Ukraine to fight a war for it)?
Well that fucking stinks. It seems that John and I agree for the first time. But shouldnât we be punishing Russia (in the sense of arming Ukraine and not a no-fly zone) for farting around in our sphere of influence?
Hereâs a realistic idea: punish Russia when they do evil shit, instead of instantly rolling over, and maybe theyâll be less likely to do it again.
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Every day that Michael Tracey doesnât get the âOfficial Russian Government Agentâ tag on twitter is a travesty.
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holy shit, what if John has been shitposting on the internet since the 90s as a Keeed personality?
https://twitter.com/martinoweiss/status/1518015125994758144
Apparently this twitter user is not aware that NATO is using Ukraine as a proxy army to attack Russia, after somehow tricking Russia into invading Ukraine. Or something.
https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1518183647232376833
Someone needs to talk to a realist. Itâs kind of like a therapist, but they tell you to just lie back and accept it.